Tag: Cozy fantasy

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (8/12/25) – The Full Moon Coffee Shop

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles! Apparently today marks ten whole years since I started with this blog…granted, it was a pretty far cry from what it is today, but it’s a marvel that I’ve kept it going for this long. Thanks for tagging along, everyone! 🫡

In my ongoing quest to read more translated books, I’ve stumbled upon a lot more Japanese books about cats than I anticipated. Granted, they’ve varied greatly, but it’s a pattern. Not that I’m complaining—I’ll read most anything involving cats! Which is partly why I decided to read The Full Moon Coffee Shop. It sounded downright whimsical, and to some degree it was, but ultimately, that quality was dulled by the formulaic nature of…well, pretty much everything else.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Full Moon Coffee Shop – Mai Mochizuki (translated by Jesse Kirkwood)

The Full Moon Coffee Shop is no ordinary café. It only appears during the night of the full moon. Its waitstaff are talking cats, and you can never order what you want—they only serve you what you need. And if you find yourself in the Full Moon Coffee Shop, you’re in need of direction in life. Weaving together the interconnected stories of five unlikely strangers, the Full Moon Coffee Shop may be the answer to their burning questions—and the healing they desperately need.

TW/CW: cheating/affairs, sexism, grief

One of the biggest letdowns in reading: finding a book that seems super cute and whimsical, and then said whimsy is there in name only. You can’t just give us an incorporeal coffee shop manned by talking astrologer cats and then be so unconvinced by your own whimsy! God.

The worst thing that a cozy book can be is preachy. Having a low-stakes novel centered around life lessons, healing, and character growth doesn’t mean that you have to have a Learning Moment™️ worded like a PSA every few chapters. It’s a pitfall that’s easy to fall into with cozy fiction, but it’s one that takes away the magic for me. For novels that are meant to be about taking quiet moments that are often taken for granted and giving them more weight and value to the narrative, having everything explained to you seems so contrary to what “cozy” means to me. I just resent books that try to show character development decently, and then ruin it all by assuming that the reader doesn’t have the capacity to figure out what just happened and regurgitating it word-for-word. This was the main problem with this novel—it assumed so little of the reader and spelled everything out in the least subtle way. Every chapter of The Full Moon Coffee Shop pulled a “And what did we learn today, kids?” moment at the end without fail, and it just got so tedious so quickly. It just felt so preachily worded and repetitive, dulling any emotional impact this story could’ve had.

I feel so conflicted when talking about the writing of The Full Moon Coffee Shop. I read it in translation, so I really don’t know who’s to blame for the quality of the writing. I don’t know if Mai Mochizuki’s original text was dryly written to begin with or if Jesse Kirkwood’s English translation somehow dulled some of Mochizuki’s writing style and rendered it blander than before! I have no clue! Gaaaaaaaah! In any case, The Full Moon Coffee Shop was written so stiffly for a book that billed itself as so whimsical. The characters’ inner monologues all feel very rote and one-note and there’s hardly any sensory descriptions to immerse the reader in the setting. The writing let me down the most when we were introduced to the coffee shop itself, the most unique part of the novel; while I enjoyed the concepts of everything, from the celestial-themed desserts to the talking cat waitstaff, it was all described with the sparsest possible detail, the bare minimum word count to get the reader to visualize a new image. The Full Moon Coffee Shop is a slim novel, so it’s not like more detailed descriptions would’ve made it overly long—I was barely immersed in both the real-world and magical settings. The same can be said for the characters, who were barely developed beyond a problem they needed solving. The writing just felt like the bare minimum of describing…well, everything.

For me, one of the main issues with The Full Moon Coffee Shop was just how formulaic everything was. I had the same issue with What You Are Looking For is In the Library, a similarly cozy book about finding direction in life, but in that case, the stories were so repetitive and short and seemed to be saying the exact same thing, so my patience ran thin much earlier than with this novel. Once again, cozy doesn’t necessarily mean predictable—it should mean something that’s low-stakes, not repetitive. The Full Moon Coffee Shop felt like hearing the same story three times over; character is dissatisfied with life, character discovers coffee shop, character gets their natal chart read, character has a revelation and magically figures out how to fix their life. Rinse and repeat for 200 pages. You can see how tired that got. I appreciated that Mochizuki at least attempted to switch things up for the last story, but it didn’t do much to my interest in the story. All that changes is that it’s framed through the characters thinking that the coffee shop experience is a dream. Sadly, that amounted to little more than a perspective change and a switch to a handwritten font. It just got so repetitive and boring after a while, and even though the stories focused on different problems, Mochizuki rarely had anything new to say.

I hadn’t read a ton of reviews of The Full Moon Coffee Shop going in, but it seems a lot of people had problems with the heavy emphasis on astrology. The presence of astrology in and of itself wasn’t an issue for me, but it was more how said astrology was woven into the novel that got on my nerves. “Woven” is a generous word—even as someone who’s at least sort of into astrology, I felt absolutely sledgehammered over the head with every minute detail of it. After a certain point, The Full Moon Coffee Shop just became Astrology for Dummies. You know that meme of the kid pretending to read the Bible, but there’s a Minecraft book peeking out of the Bible? That’s what it felt like. It’s less of a novel and more somebody talking at you about the natal charts of complete strangers for 200 pages. I guess it might be beneficial to assume that your reader doesn’t know much about astrology, but Mochizuki got so bogged down in explaining every minute detail of every character’s astrology that the real meat of the story got lost. For me, it took away from the heart of the story, which should’ve been getting insights into the characters and their healing journeys. I feel like astrology easily could’ve been a fascinating aspect of the novel if not for how unsubtly it was shoehorned in—there could’ve been a chance to give it some narrative significance rather than spending 50 pages explaining astrology to the reader like they’re 5 years old.

Despite the formula of The Full Moon Coffee Shop getting on my nerves, I at least appreciated some of the messaging that the cats gave to the characters on how to fix their lives, particularly in the second chapter. However, the advice that the cats gave Mizuki seemed downright weird. I get that she’s not having success in her career, but the cats telling her to get with the times and not write what she loves just seemed so odd to me. There could’ve been something so poignant about success not being everything and her failures only being a small part of her career, but the cats were just talking to her like they were corporate executives telling her to be hip with the kids! Not only did that rub me the wrong way, the story itself seemed to refute the cats’ advice as well. Mizuki ends up finding success when she injects her signature style into a project that she was only doing for the money, thereby finding success in being herself and putting her own personal spin on things! Crazy concept! So why even have the cats tell her that in the first place, if that’s not even the lesson that the novel leads us to believe that Mizuki takes away from it?

All in all, a cozy novel that billed itself as tender and sweet, but ended up being unsubtle, preachy, and unconvinced of its own lessons. 2 stars.

The Full Moon Coffee Shop is the first in the Full Moon Coffee Shop series, followed by Best Wishes from The Full Moon Coffee Shop. Mai Mochizuki is also the author of the Holmes of Kyoto series.

Today’s song:

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Uncategorized

Book Review Tuesday (7/12/25) – Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Continuing with my reviews for Disability Pride Month, here’s a sweet cozy fantasy with queer, disabled leads! Of course, those three factors are what drew me in, and I was in the mood for something more low-stakes. Though it wasn’t the best cozy fantasy out there, Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea was a sweet diversion.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea (Tomes & Tea, #1) – Rebecca Thorne

All Reyna and Kianthe want to do is escape. Kianthe is tethered to her job as the most powerful mage in the Queendom, and Reyna works as one of the Queen’s most esteemed bodyguards. But against all odds, they run away together to live out their shared dream: opening a bookshop that serves tea. As their dream falls into place, they discover that it’s not as easy as they thought to abandon their lives and run away, from the guards searching for Reyna and the complications of Kianthe’s magic. But they’re determined to make their dreams come true, and they’ll stop at nothing to have a moment of peace.

TW/CW: fire, injury, loss of loved ones, murder, violence, panic attacks

If you can get past the initially corny title, there’s some comfort to be had here, just like a good cup of relaxing tea. Am I committed to sticking around for the even punnier titles in the rest of the series? Not really, if I’m being honest. That said, if you’re looking for something fluffy, romantic, and sweet, Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea is the perfect diversion for you.

As far as coziness goes, Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea was a solid entry into the genre! Although it’s more action-oriented than a typical cozy fantasy novel, the pacing works in such a way that it takes a backseat to the more quiet, gentle parts of the novel. Thorne’s way of describing the mountainous landscape and the interior of the bookshop was relaxing and cozy; if it hadn’t been July when I read this, it would’ve been the perfect book to read while swaddled in blankets during the winter. It’s hard to get a reader invested in a relationship that’s already been going strong for at least a few years, but those quiet moments were perfect to get acquainted with Reyna and Kianthe. There’s plentiful soft, tender moments between the couple, both when they’re enjoying spending time together and when they’re trying to work out issues—often related to hurdles with getting the bookshop to work, but usually with something more interpersonal at its heart. If you can already get past the corny title, chances are, you’ll get past some of the more corny book and tea-related puns—for the most part, it’s a very silly, fluffy book, and it 100% fulfills its purpose as such. And damn, I needed a fluffy book.

Though this isn’t the best cozy genre fiction I’ve ever read, I think Thorne’s writing style lends itself perfectly to the subgenre. She had a very soothing way of describing the world and the characters—every description felt very bucolic and gentle, making even the world seem comforting alongside the storyline. With this style, she was able to render the quiet, tender moments of relationship development between Reyna and Kianthe beautifully, whether it was working out disagreements in their visions of the bookshop or helping the other work through panic attacks. Her writing just has a calming quality that not many writers do—an essential tool when you’re writing cozy fiction. Thorne’s passion for her characters and world truly shone through in every word, and it was clear that they took great care in making their writing as true to the intended mood as possible.

A rotating cast of characters is going to be a staple if your novel centers around a bookshop that serves tea, but that isn’t even where this novel’s character problem arises: it’s how they’re introduced. The issue with having Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea being placed smack dab in the middle of an established relationship is that many of the other characters are established as being involved with them, but you’re barely offered an explanation as to why. It seems like there’s quite a lot of short stories and one-shots and whatnot surrounding the novel, but without that context, it was rather disorienting juggling all of the characters when the protagonists had established relationships with them and their roles were hardly ever fully explained. Combine that with the fact that there were so many of these characters, and you’ve got a bit of a mess as far as getting the reader to care about anyone besides the protagonists.

Now, about the worldbuilding…or, “go, girl, give us nothing!” The worldbuilding wasn’t the main draw for me when I picked up Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea, but even then, it was rather underwhelming. Generically European and vaguely medieval high fantasy setting strikes again…free me from this prison!! I get that the romance and the characterization was the more central aspect to the book, but I still think that Thorne could’ve done much more with her worldbuilding. Try as I might, there wasn’t anything new offered about the setting. Though the descriptions of said setting were soothingly written, I struggled to find anything that stood out about the world—not even the magic system or the creatures. The monarchy and mythical creatures (griffins, dragons, etc.) were standard fare, but even those didn’t have any small quirks that would distinguish them from any other fantasy novel. If I think of what drew me in to this book, my mind goes to it being cozy and having queer/disabled leads; though I loved these aspects and think they were done wonderfully, they don’t strike me as necessarily unique—I’ve read other books with these exact qualities that had original worldbuilding to back them up. I’m not saying that this book had to have some insanely convoluted worldbuilding or anything, but at least give us something!

All in all, a cozy fantasy that was sweet enough to tide me over, but could’ve done with something more to distinguish it from all the rest. 3.5 stars!

Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea is the first novel in the Tomes & Tea series, which continues with A Pirate’s Life for Tea, Tea You at the Altar, and the final book, Alchemy and a Cup of Tea, which is slated for release in August of 2025. Rebecca Thorne is also the author of This Gilded Abyss and The Day Death Stopped.

Today’s song:

saw car seat headrest on saturday night…you will most DEFINITELY be hearing about that soon!!

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (3/18/25) – The Teller of Small Fortunes

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

You know it. You know I’m all for cozy literature. I wasn’t particularly in a moment where I needed cozy fantasy, but these days, I love to space them into my regular reading rotation to keep things lighter, if need be. I’m usually more for sci-fi than fantasy, but I love a good fantasy every once in a while. The Teller of Small Fortunes wasn’t the best cozy fantasy I’ve read, but like a mug of tea, it was great for a momentary hug of warmth and love.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Teller of Small Fortunes – Julie Leong

Tao is an immigrant from Shinara, making a living far to the west in Eshtera. She makes a living off of fortune-telling, but hers are not like the grand tales that people expect from those with Shinn heritage. But Tao’s fortunes have a catch: they are small fortunes, minor events that seemingly have no consequence, but will add up towards a life of crucial choices. She cannot stay for long in one place, lest these fortunes pile up and her customers start to expect more complex predictions. But when she crosses paths with an ex-mercenary and a thief-turned-poet on the road, Tao has to keep a promise to the fortune she gave them: they’re looking for a missing girl, and Tao knows that she’ll be reunited with them. What’s unknown, however, is how it’ll happen…

TW/CW (from Julie Leong): political conflict, death of a parent, parental neglect, racism, grief, alcohol

While The Teller of Small Fortunes wasn’t the best cozy fantasy I’ve ever read, if you’re looking for something sweet to tide you over, look no further! In the mood for found family, cats, spells, and wonky pastries? I’ve got just the book for you.

Given the crowds that I hang around with, it might surprise you that I’ve never actually played DnD. I’ve always been adjacent to people who are into it and frequently play it, but I’ve never played myself. By osmosis, I know enough about it to discern that anyone who loves DnD will absolutely eat up The Teller of Small Fortunes! Somebody with more DnD knowledge could probably sort each character into a class, but I’m illiterate in that department; yet even still, I can tell that it came about in the way that many DnD campaigns seem to: out of love and out of friendship. Leong’s cozy fantasy has the perfect balance of wholesomeness, levity, and more serious themes, and overall, it’s an ode to the friends we find in unexpected places. The contrasting personalities of Tao, Mash, Silt, and Kina made for a delightful found family with goals that often got in the way of each other, but twisted to form a journey across a fantastical land that taught them lessons about identity, friendship, and individuality. It’s just so sweet. Admittedly, it did border on a bit cloying at times (even for me, both with my cozy fiction proclivities and my merciless sweet tooth), but overall, cozy fantasy fans will be more than satisfied. Plus, there’s a cat. Automatic win in my book.

Tao’s character arc and the themes around it were the heart of The Teller of Small Fortunes. This novel focuses heavily on her immigrant identity, but it explored something that I haven’t often seen with these narratives. In order to make a living outside of her home country, Tao has to perform a stereotype—in her case, being a seer. She relies on this preconceived notion of her people all being able to see the future, and knows that she’ll be able to make money off of it, yet she tries so hard to make it define her. On the other side of the coin, there’s the Guild of Mages, who physically want to use her as a pawn, fitting her into their similarly superficial stereotype of what a magic-user should be. Yes, The Teller of Small Fortunes is very much a “be yourself” narrative (I will always hate Disney for making people trivialize this kind of message), but it’s one that’s complicated by the nuance of the aspects of Tao’s identity. For her, being herself is a lifelong fight, held up by several systemic forces of oppression. Her journey is a mental one just as much as it is physical, and it required the same labor, with a satisfying conclusion: the conscious effort by her to not let other people box her in.

However, the writing sometimes got on my nerves. For me, cozy fantasy can sometimes fall into the trap of being almost condescending in its writing style; it veers to strongly into the “and what did we learn today, kids?” kind of storytelling, even if it’s often aimed at adults. There is a marked difference between having a low-stakes plot and dumbing down the language for your audience. The Teller of Small Fortunes didn’t completely fall into making the language overly digestible, but every plot point and side quest (of which there are many) tended to have a very clear, obviously stated lesson that accompanied the ending. Even if said plot points were well-executed—which they often were, especially the scene with the phoenix egg—their impact was often lessened by the regurgitating of what the scene was meant to mean for the characters and the message, as if we couldn’t figure it out. I honestly didn’t mind that these plot points, especially the ending, were wrapped up in notably kind, easier ways—that’s almost a staple of cozy fiction, at this point—but we didn’t have to get their message shoved in our faces on a neon sign. Additionally, as a character, Kina also erred on this side of saccharine—she was sweet in the way that some cozy fiction characters are, but like the pastries she made, it got a little too sweet in a grating way.

I also found the worldbuilding to be quite generic. The Teller of Small Fortunes was one of those fantasy novels that took existing countries, copied and pasted them into the narrative, and added magic and mythical creatures; Shinara was clearly an analogue for China, which, while it was great for the themes of anti-immigrant sentiment and xenophobia, didn’t make for worldbuilding that was interesting or novel in any way. The same can be said for most of the other places that Tao and the gang pass through—most of them fell under the “vaguely European, I will not elaborate” curse that plagues high fantasy, and the only things that distinguished them, if any, were some of the exports/trades that they had. I will say that I loved the system of the Guild of Mages, and they served as great commentary for tokenization and a distant but tangible source of corruption in the world, but they didn’t have enough of a presence for them to have an effect on the world for me. It all felt very lackluster to me in contrast to the care that was put into the characters. I also would’ve liked more clarification on the regional magic. It’s implied through some of Tao’s background that magic is often associated with/endemic to particular regions (hence the stereotypes of Shinn people being seers/fortune tellers and whatnot), but we don’t get a clarification of whether or not the rule also applies to the surrounding regions.

Overall, a cozy fantasy that had lovely, poignant characters and themes, but was less fortunate in the worldbuilding department. 3.5 stars!

The Teller of Small Fortunes is a standalone and Julie Leong’s debut. Her next novel, The Keeper of Magical Things, is a companion novel set in the same universe as The Teller of Small Fortunes, and is slated for release in October 2025.

Today’s song:

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (10/3/23) – Under the Earth, Over the Sky

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I swear it’s entirely a coincidence that I’m reviewing two books that have titles separated by commas with the word “sky” somewhere in them (The other would be Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea). They’re entirely different books, but I’m glad to say that they’re equally excellent. Under the Earth, Over the Sky gives fantasy a tenderness that it’s desperately needed for years, and I am all the better for reading it.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Under the Earth, Over the Sky – Emily McCosh

Iohmar does not meddle in the affairs of the human world. He is above such things, being an ancient fae king older than human civilization itself. But when he finds an abandoned, dying baby in the borderlands between the human world and his kingdom, he takes it upon himself to raise him as his own. He names his human son Lorcan, and he takes him back to live in the fae kingdom. But Iohmar’s ancient magic has begun to wane, and with threats encroaching into his kingdom, he must do whatever it takes to protect baby Lor and the rest of his subjects.

TW/CW: past mentions of abuse/loss of a loved one, abandonment of a child, nightmares, child endangerment

I’m so sick and tired of grimdark, man. I’ll save my rant about it for another day, but I just feel like it’s a blight on fantasy, and on any genre where it’s applicable. (Life is full of joy and beauty! They can never take your joyous whimsy!) That’s why this book feels so necessary. Under the Earth, Over the Sky really did heal my soul. It may not be without its flaws, but it’s such a deeply moving and poignant tale of love beyond boundaries and parenthood.

For the past few years, I’ve found myself drifting away from most kinds of high and epic fantasy; at their very worst, they’ve just felt like the same plots coughed up over and over, but with far heftier of a page count than is necessary. But Under the Earth, Over the Sky feels like the best kind of subversion of all of the self-serious, high-and-mighty tropes that have turned me off from a fair portion of the genre. How do you make your haughty, ancient king of the fae with the wisdom of a thousand moons a genuinely compelling character? Simple: make him raise a baby. The synopsis already made this book sound endearing, but I couldn’t have predicted how much of a warm bath to the soul that this book would really be.

Of course, the dynamic between Iohmar and his adopted son was where Under the Earth, Over the Sky shone the brightest. Watching Iohmar’s cold heart slowly melt as he began to care for Lor was truly a joy, and Emily McCosh portrayed all of the ups and downs of their father-son relationship so poignantly. He was such a compelling character beyond his dynamic with Lor as well; McCosh also did an excellent job of making his life and relationships genuinely complicated, making him feel truly fleshed-out and making some of the stakes seem more real. Every part of his raising Lor tugged at my heartstrings, from the moment he realizes that he has to care for this baby, to grappling with the fact that his appearance frightens his own son. Not to praise the plague that is the Disney live-action remakes, this novel reminded me of the only good one—the dynamic between Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent and baby Aurora was similarly sweet. The fact that it’s a father-son relationship also feels so important—having a male character showing such vulnerability and care is something that we need more of, certainly.

Most of the other character interactions were similarly comforting and cozy. I especially loved the dynamic between Iohmar and his wife Rúnda; they were so quietly devoted to each other, and their gentle love fueled the already heartwarming feel of this novel. The interactions between Iohmar and the humans he encounters along the way were similarly poignant. Not only did they serve to drive home the rift between Lor’s human and adopted fae identities, Iohmar’s subtle changes in how he dealt with humans was so tender and indicative of his shifting character. Strangely, even though there weren’t as many characters, subtle interactions like these were what made the world feel lived-in—it didn’t take a lot for this world to feel populated, which helped immensely with my feeling of immersion.

However, as well fleshed-out as many aspects of Under the Earth, Over the Sky were, the subplots surrounding the main plot felt rather rushed. Although the stakes of Iohmar’s magic rotting were clear and tangible, the aspect of the rippling felt like it barely held any weight. They weren’t as well established at the start of the novel, and that lack of immersion felt like none of it was really serious—it really did feel like an afterthought. That part was resolved in a similarly messy way, but at least it got somewhat neatly swept under the rug. It was an interesting enough concept, but a lack of context and fleshing-out made it feel almost meaningless.

All in all, a refreshingly cozy and tender story of parental love and changes of heart. 4 stars!

Under the Earth, Over the Sky is a standalone, but Emily McCosh is also the author of All the Woods She Watches Over, an anthology of short stories and poetry, and the ongoing In Dying Starlight series.

Today’s song:

live laugh Lisa Germano

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!